The present invention relates to a solar power utilization technique. More particularly, the present invention provides a method and system for utilizing solar thermal energy for integrated home utility supply including space heating, water heating, air ventilation, and air conditioning. Merely, by way of example, the present invention has been applied to demonstrate performance of an integrated thermal system coupled to a solar module for providing all season's energy utilization required for a target home/building, but it would be recognized that the invention has a much broader range of applications.
Over the past centuries, the world population of human beings has exploded. Along with the population, demand for resources has also grown explosively. Such resources include raw materials such as wood, iron, and copper and energy, such as fossil fuels, including coal and oil. Industrial countries world wide project more increases in oil consumption for transportation and heating purposes, especially from developing nations such as China and India. Obviously, our daily lives depend, for the most part, upon oil or other fossil fuels, which are being depleted and becoming increasingly scarce.
Along with the depletion of our fossil fuel resources, our planet has experienced a global warming phenomena, known as “global warming,” which was brought to our foremost attention by Al Gore, who is the former Vice President of the United States of America. Global warming is known as an increase in the average temperature of the Earth's air near its surface, which is projected to continue to increase at a rapid pace. Warming is believed to be caused by greenhouse gases, which are derived, in part, from use of fossil fuels. The increase in temperature is expected to cause extreme weather conditions and a drastic size reduction of the polar ice caps, which in turn will lead to higher sea levels and an increase in the rate of warming. Ultimately, other effects include mass species extinctions, and possibly other uncertainties that may be detrimental to human beings.
Much if not all of the useful energy found on the Earth comes from our sun. Generally all common plant life on the Earth achieves life using photosynthesis processes from sun light. Fossil fuels such as oil were also developed from biological materials derived from energy associated with the sun. For most living beings on the Earth, sunlight has been essential. Likewise, the sun has been our most important energy source and fuel for modern day solar energy. Solar energy possesses many characteristics that are very desirable! Solar energy is renewable, clean, abundant, and often readily available.
As an example, solar panels have been developed to convert sunlight into utility energy. As merely an example, solar thermal panels often convert electromagnetic radiation from the sun light into thermal energy for heating homes, running certain industrial processes, or driving high grade turbines to generate electricity. As another example, solar photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly into electricity for a variety of applications. Solar photovoltaic panels are generally composed of an array of solar cells, which are interconnected to each other. During the operation of converting light to electricity, solar cells also generate high percentage of power in a form of thermal energy. Accordingly, solar panels formed in any combination of thermal modules and photovoltaic modules can generate low cost clean thermal energy with great potential to benefit our nation, security, and human users. They can diversify our energy requirements, reduce the world's dependence on oil and other potentially detrimental sources of energy, and substantially reduce green house gases release into atmosphere.
Although solar panels have been used successful for certain applications, there are still certain limitations. Typical photovoltaic modules are just used to convert sunlight into electricity while let all thermal energy generated (passively) wasted. To some degrees, the extra thermal energy (under the photovoltaic PV modules) may cause performance degradation of the PV cells and cause high temperature of a roof where the PV modules are mounted on. Depending upon the geographic regions, the drawbacks mentioned above may contribute to be part of a big hurdle for installing relative costly PV panels to compete with the direct purchase of electricity from public power companies. These and other limitations are described throughout the present specification, and may be described in more detail below.
From the above, it is seen that an improved technique of effectively utilizing the thermal energy generated by the solar panels for an integrated home conditioning is highly desired.